But I spoke true. I was too sick of the much whisky and rum to be
afraid to die. At least my mouth would stink no more, nor my head
ache, nor the inside of me be as dry-hot sand. Almost worst of
all, I suffered at thought of the harpooner's tongue, as last I had
seen it lying on the sand and covered with sand. O Kanaka Oolea,
what animals young men are with the drink! Not until they have
grown old, like you and me, do they control their wantonness of
thirst and drink sparingly, like you and me."
"Because we have to," Hardman Pool rejoined. "Old stomachs are
worn thin and tender, and we drink sparingly because we dare not
drink more. We are wise, but the wisdom is bitter."
"The priest Eoppo sang a long mele about Kahekili's mother and his
mother's mother, and all their mothers all the way back to the
beginning of time," Kumuhana resumed. "And it seemed I must die of
my sand-hot dryness ere he was done. And he called upon all the
gods of the under world, the middle world and the over world, to
care for and cherish the dead alii about to be consigned to them,
and to carry out the curses--they were terrible curses--he laid
upon all living men and men to live after who might tamper with the
bones of Kahekili to use them in sport of vermin-slaying.
"Do you know, Kanaka Oolea, the priest talked a language largely
different, and I know it was the priest language, the old language.
Maui he did not name Maui, but Maui-Tiki-Tiki and Maui-Po-Tiki.
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37
And Hina, the goddess-mother of Maui, he named Ina. And Maui's
god-father he named sometimes Akalana and sometimes Kanaloa.
Strange how one about to die and very thirsty should remember such
things! And I remember the priest named Hawaii as Vaii, and Lanai
as Ngangai."
"Those were the Maori names," Hardman Pool explained, "and the
Samoan and Tongan names, that the priests brought with them in
their first voyages from the south in the long ago when they found
Hawaii and settled to dwell upon it."
"Great is your wisdom, O Kanaka Oolea," the old man accorded
solemnly. "Ku, our Supporter of the Heavens, the priest named Tu,
and also Ru; and La, our God of the Sun, he named Ra--"
"And Ra was a sun-god in Egypt in the long ago," Pool interrupted
with a sparkle of interest. "Truly, you Polynesians have travelled
far in time and space since first you began. A far cry it is from
Old Egypt, when Atlantis was still afloat, to Young Hawaii in the
North Pacific. But proceed, Kumuhana. Do you remember anything
also of what the priest Eoppo sang?"
"At the very end," came the confirming nod, "though I was near dead
myself, and nearer to die under the priest's knife, he sang what I
have remembered every word of. Listen! It was thus."
And in quavering falsetto, with the customary broken-notes, the old
man sang.
"A Maori death-chant unmistakable," Pool exclaimed, "sung by an
Hawaiian with a tattooed tongue! Repeat it once again, and I shall
say it to you in English."
And when it had been repeated, he spoke it slowly in English:
"But death is nothing new.
Death is and has been ever since old Maui died.
Then Pata-tai laughed loud
And woke the goblin-god,
Who severed him in two, and shut him in,
So dusk of eve came on."
"And at the last," Kumuhana resumed, "I was not slain. Eoppo, the
killing knife in hand and ready to lift for the blow, did not lift.
And I? How did I feel and think? Often, Kanaka Oolea, have I
since laughed at the memory of it. I felt very thirsty. I did not
want to die. I wanted a drink of water. I knew I was going to
die, and I kept remembering the thousand waterfalls falling to
waste down the pans" (precipices) "of the windward Koolau
Mountains. I did not think of Anapuni. I was too thirsty. I did
not think of Malia. I was too thirsty. But continually, inside my
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head, I saw the tongue of the harpooner, covered dry with sand, as
I had last seen it, lying in the sand. My tongue was like that,
too. And in the bottom of the canoe rolled about many drinking
nuts. Yet I did not attempt to drink, for these were chiefs and I
was a common man.
"'No,' said Eoppo, commanding the chiefs to throw overboard the
coffin. 'There are not two moepuus, therefore there shall be
none.'
"'Slay the one,' the chiefs cried.
"But Eoppo shook his head, and said: 'We cannot send Kahekili on
his way with only the tops of the taro.'
"'Half a fish is better than none,' Aimoku said the old saying.
"'Not at the burying of an alii,' was the priest's quick reply.
'It is the law. We cannot be niggard with Kahekili and cut his
allotment of sacrifice in half.'
"So, for the moment, while the coffin went overside, I was not
slain. And it was strange that I was glad immediately that I was
to live. And I began to remember Malia, and to begin to plot a
vengeance on Anapuni. And with the blood of life thus freshening
in me, my thirst multiplied on itself tenfold and my tongue and
mouth and throat seemed as sanded as the tongue of the harpooner.
The coffin being overboard, I was sitting in the bottom of the
canoe. A coconut rolled between my legs and I closed them on it.
But as I picked it up in my hand, Aimoku smote my hand with the
paddle-edge. Behold!"
He held up the hand, showing two fingers crooked from never having
been set.
"I had no time to vex over my pain, for worse things were upon me.
All the chiefs were crying out in horror. The coffin, head-end up,
had not sunk. It bobbed up and down in the sea astern of us. And
the canoe, without way on it, bow-on to sea and wind, was drifted
down by sea and wind upon the coffin. And the glass of it was to
us, so that we could see the face and head of Kahekili through the
glass; and he grinned at us through the glass and seemed alive
already in the other world and angry with us, and, with other-world
power, about to wreak his anger upon us. Up and down he bobbed,
and the canoe drifted closer upon him.
"'Kill him!' 'Bleed him!' 'Thrust to the heart of him!' These
things the chiefs were crying out to Eoppo in their fear. 'Over
with the taro tops!' 'Let the alii have the half of a fish!'
"Eoppo, priest though he was, was likewise afraid, and his reason
weakened before the sight of Kahekili in his haole coffin that
would not sink. He seized me by the hair, drew me to my feet, and
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39
lifted the knife to plunge to my heart. And there was no
resistance in me. I knew again only that I was very thirsty, and
before my swimming eyes, in mid-air and close up, dangled the
sanded tongue of the harpooner.
"But before t
he knife could fall and drive in, the thing happened
that saved me. Akai, half-brother to Governor Boki, as you will
remember, was steersman of the canoe, and, therefore, in the stern,
was nearest to the coffin and its dead that would not sink. He was
wild with fear, and he thrust out with the point of his paddle to
fend off the coffined alii that seemed bent to come on board. The
point of the paddle struck the glass. The glass broke--"
"And the coffin immediately sank," Hardman Pool broke in; "the air
that floated it escaping through the broken glass."
"The coffin immediately sank, being builded by the ship's carpenter
like a boat," Kumuhana confirmed. "And I, who was a moepuu, became
a man once more. And I lived, though I died a thousand deaths from
thirst before we gained back to the beach at Waikiki.
"And so, O Kanaka Oolea, the bones of Kahekili do not lie in the
Royal Mausoleum. They are at the bottom of Molokai Channel, if
not, long since, they have become floating dust of slime, or,
builded into the bodies of the coral creatures dead and gone, are
builded into the coral reef itself. Of men I am the one living who
saw the bones of Kahekili sink into the Molokai Channel."
In the pause that followed, wherein Hardman Pool was deep sunk in
meditation, Kumuhana licked his dry lips many times. At the last
he broke silence:
"The twelve dollars, Kanaka Oolea, for the jackass and the second-
hand saddle and bridle?"
"The twelve dollars would be thine," Pool responded, passing to the
ancient one six dollars and a half, "save that I have in my stable
junk the very bridle and saddle for you which I shall give you.
These six dollars and a half will buy you the perfectly suitable
jackass of the pake" (Chinese) "at Kokako who told me only
yesterday that such was the price."
They sat on, Pool meditating, conning over and over to himself the
Maori death-chant he had heard, and especially the line, "So dusk
of eve came on," finding in it an intense satisfaction of beauty;
Kumuhana licking his lips and tokening that he waited for something
more. At last he broke silence.
"I have talked long, O Kanaka Oolea. There is not the enduring
moistness in my mouth that was when I was young. It seems that
afresh upon me is the thirst that was mine when tormented by the
visioned tongue of the harpooner. The gin and milk is very good, O
Kanaka Oolea, for a tongue that is like the harpooner's."
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40
A shadow of a smile flickered across Pool's face. He clapped his
hands, and the little maid came running.
"Bring one glass of gin and milk for old Kumuhana," commanded
Hardman Pool.
WAIKIKI, HONOLULU
June 28, 1916.
WHEN ALICE TOLD HER SOUL
This, of Alice Akana, is an affair of Hawaii, not of this day, but
of days recent enough, when Abel Ah Yo preached his famous revival
in Honolulu and persuaded Alice Akana to tell her soul. But what
Alice told concerned itself with the earlier history of the then
surviving generation.
For Alice Akana was fifty years old, had begun life early, and,
early and late, lived it spaciously. What she knew went back into
the roots and foundations of families, businesses, and plantations.
She was the one living repository of accurate information that
lawyers sought out, whether the information they required related
to land-boundaries and land gifts, or to marriages, births,
bequests, or scandals. Rarely, because of the tight tongue she
kept behind her teeth, did she give them what they asked; and when
she did was when only equity was served and no one was hurt.
For Alice had lived, from early in her girlhood, a life of flowers,
and song, and wine, and dance; and, in her later years, had herself
been mistress of these revels by office of mistress of the hula
house. In such atmosphere, where mandates of God and man and
caution are inhibited, and where woozled tongues will wag, she
acquired her historical knowledge of things never otherwise
whispered and rarely guessed. And her tight tongue had served her
well, so that, while the old-timers knew she must know, none ever
heard her gossip of the times of Kalakaua's boathouse, nor of the
high times of officers of visiting warships, nor of the diplomats
and ministers and councils of the countries of the world.
So, at fifty, loaded with historical dynamite sufficient, if it
were ever exploded, to shake the social and commercial life of the
Islands, still tight of tongue, Alice Akana was mistress of the
hula house, manageress of the dancing girls who hula'd for royalty,
for luaus (feasts), house-parties, poi suppers, and curious
tourists. And, at fifty, she was not merely buxom, but short and
fat in the Polynesian peasant way, with a constitution and lack of
organic weakness that promised incalculable years. But it was at
fifty that she strayed, quite by chance of time and curiosity, into
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Abel Ah Yo's revival meeting.
Now Abel Ah Yo, in his theology and word wizardry, was as much
mixed a personage as Billy Sunday. In his genealogy he was much
more mixed, for he was compounded of one-fourth Portuguese, one-
fourth Scotch, one-fourth Hawaiian, and one-fourth Chinese. The
Pentecostal fire he flamed forth was hotter and more variegated
than could any one of the four races of him alone have flamed
forth. For in him were gathered together the cannyness and the
cunning, the wit and the wisdom, the subtlety and the rawness, the
passion and the philosophy, the agonizing spirit-groping and he
legs up to the knees in the dung of reality, of the four radically
different breeds that contributed to the sum of him. His, also,
was the clever self-deceivement of the entire clever compound.
When it came to word wizardry, he had Billy Sunday, master of slang
and argot of one language, skinned by miles. For in Abel Ah Yo
were the five verbs, and nouns, and adjectives, and metaphors of
four living languages. Intermixed and living promiscuously and
vitally together, he possessed in these languages a reservoir of
expression in which a myriad Billy Sundays could drown. Of no
race, a mongrel par excellence, a heterogeneous scrabble, the
genius of the admixture was superlatively Abel Ah Yo's. Like a
chameleon, he titubated and scintillated grandly between the
diverse parts of him, stunning by frontal attack and surprising and
confouding by flanking sweeps the mental homogeneity of the more
simply constituted souls who came in to his revival to sit under
him and flame to his flaming.
Abel Ah Yo believed in himself and his mixedness, as he believed in
the mixedness of his weird concept that God looked as much like him
as like any man, being no mere tribal god, but a world god that
must look equally like all races of
all the world, even if it led
to piebaldness. And the concept worked. Chinese, Korean,
Japanese, Hawaiian, Porto Rican, Russian, English, French--members
of all races--knelt without friction, side by side, to his revision
of deity.
Himself in his tender youth an apostate to the Church of England,
Abel Ah Yo had for years suffered the lively sense of being a Judas
sinner. Essentially religious, he had foresworn the Lord. Like
Judas therefore he was. Judas was damned. Wherefore he, Abel Ah
Yo, was damned; and he did not want to be damned. So, quite after
the manner of humans, he squirmed and twisted to escape damnation.
The day came when he solved his escape. The doctrine that Judas
was damned, he concluded, was a misinterpretation of God, who,
above all things, stood for justice. Judas had been God's servant,
specially selected to perform a particularly nasty job. Therefore
Judas, ever faithful, a betrayer only by divine command, was a
saint. Ergo, he, Abel Ah Yo, was a saint by very virtue of his
apostasy to a particular sect, and he could have access with clear
grace any time to God.
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42
This theory became one of the major tenets of his preaching, and
was especially efficacious in cleansing the consciences of the
back-sliders from all other faiths who else, in the secrecy of
their subconscious selves, were being crushed by the weight of the
Judas sin. To Abel Ah Yo, God's plan was as clear as if he, Abel
Ah Yo, had planned it himself. All would be saved in the end,
although some took longer than others, and would win only to
backseats. Man's place in the ever-fluxing chaos of the world was
definite and pre-ordained--if by no other token, then by denial
that there was any ever-fluxing chaos. This was a mere bugbear of
mankind's addled fancy; and, by stinging audacities of thought and
speech, by vivid slang that bit home by sheerest intimacy into his
listeners' mental processes, he drove the bugbear from their
brains, showed them the loving clarity of God's design, and,
thereby, induced in them spiritual serenity and calm.
What chance had Alice Akana, herself pure and homogeneous Hawaiian,
against his subtle, democratic-tinged, four-race-engendered, slang-
munitioned attack? He knew, by contact, almost as much as she
about the waywardness of living and sinning--having been singing